


Oxygen

by TetrodotoxinB



Series: Whumptober 2020 [27]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Blood, Buried Alive, Day 27, Head trauma, Lacerations, Stitches, Trapped, Whumptober 2020, dislocated shoulder, earthquake, punctured lung
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:28:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27247312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TetrodotoxinB/pseuds/TetrodotoxinB
Summary: Living in LA, Mac and Jack are no strangers to earthquakes.
Series: Whumptober 2020 [27]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947493
Comments: 22
Kudos: 56
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Oxygen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starrylizard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starrylizard/gifts).



> Many thanks to [aravenwood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aravenwood/pseuds/aravenwood) for her extreme kindness in being willing to beta all of these whumptober fills! Especially so since she's also writing her own (amazing!) fics too! Please go check her out and give her some love!!!

Living in LA means that Mac knows what it’s like to feel the earth shifting under his feet. So when the floor on U3 starts to shake, he and Jack bolt for the nearest stairwell. Mac can already tell this is a bad one — things are falling off of walls, the reinforced concrete walls are cracking, and the fire suppression system plumbing has ruptured enough to start spraying water. Mac breaks off from Jack to grab a pre-packed personnel bag from the lockers as they run. It’s a split second decision that Mac instantly regrets. 

A fluorescent light fixture falls from the ceiling as Mac turns back towards Jack, the body of it hitting Mac in the head and the sharp metal edges on the end raking down Mac’s back. It hurts and he knows it’s probably worse than it feels with his body running high on adrenaline, but he shakes off the impact and runs after Jack. 

They hunker down in the stairwell and listen to the ground shake and rumble. It’s loud, louder than Mac really expected, but it lasts less than a minute. They sit in silence and complete darkness for a moment, waiting on an aftershock that Mac knows won’t come for a while yet.

“You all in one piece there, Mac?” Jack asks. 

Mac can feel the numb ache of his head and the sharp stinging of his back. He takes a deep breath and his whole right side flares with the pain of a fresh injury. “Mostly.”

“Mostly? I don’t like ‘mostly.’ I want all-ly,” Jack says.

“‘All-ly’ isn’t a word, Jack,” Mac points out.

“I know that,” Jack says back in his annoyed voice. “But you’re avoiding the question. Which part of you isn’t in one piece?”

Mac shifts just to feel the injury flare again in hopes that more feedback will help him further evaluate his condition. “A fluorescent light fixture landed on me. I mean, it was more a glancing blow. Got the back of my head and my back. It hurts, but I think I’ll be alright. What about you?”

“Me? Oh, I’m fine. Just ‘vibing’ as the kids say. Chilling here in the dark with my best friend who’s only mostly okay. Waiting to get crushed to death when the earth wiggles again,” Jack says in the most sarcastic voice, the one he reserves for very shitty situations. 

“I think you might be overselling the danger we’re in just a little bit,” Mac says.

“Oh really? I’m overselling it? We are trapped in a stairwell in the dark with no cell reception.   
There will be aftershocks, Mac. We live in LA. There are always aftershocks. Who knows if the whole building isn’t just gonna implode with one more good shake, huh? Don’t tell me I’m overselling it. Me being cautious is why you’re still alive, hoss. You don’t get to have opinions on danger,” Jack says.

Mac can tell that Jack is anxious and in full on rant-mode. That in mind, Mac elects not to argue the point further. Chances are that given the Phoenix’s system which records who is in the building and who isn’t at any given time, people are already taking roll outside. When they fail to surface with the other survivors, a rescue and recovery effort will begin. And that assumes that they aren’t able to just climb the stairs out. Mac’s willing to give the emergency lights another few minutes to kick on before he starts trying to fumble through the go-bag in the dark for a flashlight. 

“This would be easier if we had our cell phones,” Jack mutters. 

“Yeah,” Mac agrees, but they had just come back from an op via an illegally boarded UPS flight — which inconveniently did not have a place for them to charge their phones — before heading down to the weapons locker to store their gear. It didn’t seem like it would matter if they left their phones charging in the locker room. Helluva difference five minutes can make.

A buzzing sound, around sixty hertz, faintly crackles in the stairwell. Mac listens closely, trying to pinpoint the location. Hopeful for a reprieve from the darkness but fearful of a potential fire nearly forty feet underground.

“You hear that?” Jack asks.

Mac nods, though Jack can’t see. “Electricity. They’re trying to boot the emergency generators.”

A second later the hum grows louder and the emergency lights in the stairwell kick on.“Woohoo! Now we’re cooking with gas!” Jack whoops.

Mac laughs and his ribs burn from the strain. “We should see if the stairwell is clear to the surface. Maybe we can just walk out.”

“Yeah, right after I look at your ‘mostly okay,’” Jack counters.

Mac knows damn good and well that he needs medical care. He can feel the warm wetness of what can only be blood seeping down his back to dampen his pants. “If you’re so worried, we’d better served by getting to medical help,” Mac points out, deflecting Jack’s determination to examine him.

Jack scowls. “Fine, but I reserve the right to change my mind at any point.”

They make it less than a flight before rubble blocks their way.

“Well, I guess that isn’t going to work,” Mac observes dryly.

“Yeah, you think?” Jack grumbles.

A trip down the stairs back to U3 yields nothing. The door is wedged shut with whatever debris is on the other side of it. They continue down but the doors to U4 and U5 are blocked as well.

“We’ll be easier to recover if we’re closer to the surface,” Mac says, so they return to where they began and sit under the emergency light.

“Alright, well now I’m gonna look you over,” Jack says.

Mac doesn’t even argue. He hurts, and just walking up and down the stairs was trying. His head throbs in time with his pulse and he can feel the swelling of a large goose egg on the back of his head. His shoulder and back hurt in a numb tingly sort of way – Mac knows there’s an injury but the nerves don’t seem to be transmitting all the data. All he can tell is that he’s sore and bleeding and breathing is a lot of work.

Jack rummages through the go-bag to locate the flashlight. He gives Mac the shortest once over ever and immediately returns to the bag, swearing under his breath.

“Why didn’t you say how bad this is?” Jack chides. “You look like Carrie with all that blood.”

“I knew I was bleeding, but I can’t really feel it,” Mac explains. It’s a lie in all the ways that matter.

Jack holds up the safety shears. “That shirt’s a goner, pal. Hold still.”

Jack puts the flashlight between his teeth and begins to snip up the back. Mac doesn’t think anything of it until Jack begins to pull the shirt away and the wounds where the shirt had been embedded or had begun to stick flare bright with fresh pain.

“Aaahh, shit!” Mac shouts into their concrete shelter.

“Sorry, sorry. I’m trying to go easy. Here let’s pull this sleeve down,” Jack says.

Mac moves his right arm to slide the sleeve off and screams.

“Mac? Talk to me. What’s going on?” Jack says.

“Think it’s dislocated,” Mac groans. “I didn’t really feel it until now. I hadn’t tried to move it and it was just sort of numb.”

Carefully, Jack tries to manipulate Mac’s arm and Mac only barely manages to spread his knees wide enough that he vomits on the floor instead of in his lap. While Mac retches, crying out in pain between each heave of his stomach, Jack slowly lifts Mac’s arm out to the side. It’s everything Mac can do not to fight him, heck he considers asking him to stop but before he can puzzle out the words he’d need in between bouts of heaving, there’s a wet _pop_ and his shoulder slips back into socket.

The pain is no less sharp, but within a minute it’s decreased to much more tolerable levels. Mac tucks his arm into his lap and leans over, resting his good shoulder on the concrete wall. He closes his eyes and just breathes. It takes a bit before his gasps level out into something slower and less desperate.

“You gonna make it?” Jack asks.

Mac nods. “Yeah, thanks.”

“Oh, yeah. I can feel the gratitude oozing off you right now,” Jack says sarcastically.

Laughs a little dryly. “Better than waiting to do it later.”

“If you say so,” Jack mutters, clearly unconvinced after Mac’s reaction to it. “Now what’s up with this giant knot on the back of your head?”

Mac sits up so that he can get his good hand behind him. It is definitely a giant knot. “Light fixture got me.”

“You think you got a concussion?” Jack asks.

Mac shakes his head gingerly, aware of the dull throbbing of the injury. “Doesn’t feel like any concussion I’ve ever had. Still time for it to set in later though.”

“Well alright then Mr. Positivity. Have an ice pack,” Jack says, handing Mac a single-use cold compress.

Mac carefully pops the pack and shakes it until the chemical reaction sets in before gingerly pressing it to his head. 

“Well, uh, so these cuts are looking pretty rough. I really think that unless you think they’re gonna be pulling us outta here in the next half hour we need to close up these wounds,” Jack observes.

Mac knows that rescue and recovery could take hours at best, days if resources are too thin. In an environment without running water or toilet facilities infection is a major risk and they have nothing to treat one with should it arise. Cleaning the wounds and closing them is their only preventative measure against Mac’s relatively minor injuries becoming life threatening. 

“I think that’s probably a good idea,” Mac agrees.

“Alright, well you know the drill,” Jack says, tearing open various plastic packages behind Mac. 

“We can’t afford to waste water to irrigate the wound tracts,” Mac points out instantly. There’s a couple bottles of potable water in the bag Mac managed to grab but it’s worth its weight in gold in their current situation. 

“I was thinking alcohol prep pads,” Jack replies.

It’s what Mac was going to suggest but he’s absolutely not looking forward to it. It’s going to burn like hell and without water to wash the alcohol away the pain is going to linger for quite some time. But there’s else to be done so Mac just nods and grits his teeth. 

As expected, it hurts. With irrigation there’s no rubbing little pieces of rough material through open wounds, just water to rinse away debris. So not only does the alcohol make Mac’s eyes water, he has to contend with Jack’s fingers rubbing through newly flayed flesh. By the time Jack’s done cleaning, Mac’s gasping for breath and shaking from the effort of holding still. 

“You want a break before we get to the stitches?” Jack asks. 

Mac takes a minute to breath. The pain doesn’t diminish significantly but a break from having things done to him does help. It’s constant pain, static. Mac can get a handle on that. 

“I think I’m good,” Mac says shakily. There are still tears running down his cheeks but he doesn’t bother to wipe them away because there will be more before Jack’s done patching him up. 

“Just keep breathing,” Jack says. 

The first poke makes Mac flinch. 

“Easy, hoss,” Jack murmurs as he ties off the stitch. “Have I ever told you about the time that me and the guys from the FFA put a cow in the principal’s office in high school? Now this guy, hooboy, he was not a pleasant fella. This was back when principals had one of them big ole paddles in their office, the ones with the holes that left circles on your ass like you’d been caught by a giant squid, and man, he loved to use that thing. Everyone hated that sumbitch.”

Mac tries to focus on his breathing and let the monotony of Jack’s storytelling clear all the fuzz and debris out of his head. 

“Well, it was a week before graduation and I got my tenth tardy or something, so they sent me to the office and this old bastard pulls out the paddle and tells me to drop my drawers. He lit me up good. I was seventeen and thought I was a man, bulletproof and ten feet tall, but I left that office limping and wiping tears. So I told my buddies we oughta get him back. So that night we got one of the heifers from the show barn down the road and walked her up the road to the school.”

Mac is already considering all the ways that this probably went wrong and he can’t believe he’s never heard this story before. He’s stopped counting stitches, focusing his attention on Jack’s story. 

“Now a bunch of miscreants like us, we had the lock to the school picked in no time flat. We walked that cow right on inside and up the stairs to that man’s office and left it there. When we came to school in the morning, that man was red as a beet and stark raving mad. He knew we did it but he didn’t have any proof so he couldn’t paddle us, but he damn sure called us out of class to clean his office. That heifer had shit all over every damn surface in that office. We must have spent three days trying to scrub everything clean.”

Jack hits something particularly painful and Mac shouts in pain, twisting away from the sensation, groaning as his ribs flare painfully and he’s forced to subside his struggles.

“I hit a nerve?” Jack asks, resting his palm on Mac’s back comfortingly. 

Mac nods. “Yeah, I think so. That one was a lot more painful.”

“Sorry. We’re getting close. Just hang in there a bit longer,” Jack says encouragingly. Mac knows that they can’t be all that close at all, but he knows that Jack isn’t about to point that out. “So anyway, shit. Everywhere. But that wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part was the cow. Learned something super important — cows can walk up stairs, but not back down them. So once we got that sucker up there, she was good and stuck. They had to take out the side of the building in one of the classrooms so they could use a hoist and lower her down.”

It’s easy to imagine solving this problem himself — a hoist wouldn’t be all that hard to rig up with some farm equipment. But high school aged Jack would be at the mercy of whatever local farmboys decided to help. Not to mention having to take out a wall.

“That’s got the bigger cut all done,” Jack announces. “This next one is only about half as big.”

Mac sighs and slumps against the wall, his ribs protesting the movement. Pain is exhausting and he’s so so thirsty. 

“Let’s get this over with and I’ll tell you how it ended,” Jack coaxes.

Even though the story is actually rather entertaining, Mac’s not particularly motivated to get back to it. But he tells himself that when they’re done he gets some of their precious water. It’s the carrot at the end of the stick. The many, many sticks.

“So we make this sling with the big tie-down straps they use for the flatbed trailers and get it around this poor girl, who by now is absolutely terrified. Then the man from the feedstore uses the big forklift to scoop her up through some loops we made in the sling and lower her to the ground. She didn’t like being airborne at all, let me tell you what. As soon as she was out of the sling, she took off down the road, running right through the middle of town at lunch hour. Some of the boys who lived closer to town got their horses and had to chase her down and rope her to bring her back.”

Jack plasters some strips of gauze over the wounds and tapes them in place. It doesn’t change how much he hurts, but there’s always some sort of relief to having a wound tended and covered. It’s protected. The vulnerability concealed.

“You need to rest,” Jack urges Mac.

Mac nods. He’s still gripping the ice pack on the back of his head, but it’s starting to warm. He drops it to the step beside himself and leans against the wall carefully. Maybe, after a drink of water, he can get a little sleep. If nothing else, they’ve got the time.

*****

Mac wakes to the rumbling of aftershocks. Their subterranean shelter shakes and the emergency lights flicker out. Mac had been sleeping on his stomach to relieve the pressure on his back, and he tries to scramble up to protect himself in case there’s more falling debris. It hurts, his injuries suddenly sending bolts of pain as those muscles and bones are imposed upon to bear weight.

Jack’s there in a moment to pull Mac up and he tries to cover Mac with his own body, but a chunk of concrete bounces down the stairs from the landing above them, hitting Mac square in the back. Several smaller pieces skitter down around them pinging painfully but harmlessly off of them. 

Mac notices none of those smaller pieces. The piece that hit him in the back knocked the wind out of him and Mac is left reeling, gasping for air and clinging to Jack like he’s the only thing keeping him from drowning. And it feels like drowning. Mac’s back and lungs are on fire. Tears run down his face and he focuses on his abdominal muscles and diaphragm, attempting to forcefully drag air into his oxygen starved lungs. 

Grey specks dance in Mac’s vision and despite not standing, he feels like he’s going to fall over. He lists to the side and Jack’s arms tighten to keep him from tipping over onto the concrete landing. 

The aftershock is shorter and less violent than the initial temblor but the damage it’s done to Mac seems a thousand times worse. Before, each breath felt like a punch to the ribs, a deep aching pain that burned. Now, though, it all feels like knives, a strange mix of hot and cold that races through his back and lungs with each movement.

His vision is all but gone but he’s still awake enough to feel the cold cement against his back as Jack lays him down on the landing.

“You gotta breathe for me,” Jack instructs. Mac wants to breathe, he wants to tell Jack he can’t, he wants to do something, _anything,_ to communicate, but he’s barely clinging to consciousness.

Jack digs his knuckles roughly into Mac’s sternum and begins to rub. It hurts, not as bad as his probably broken ribs, but it hurts nonetheless. Bit by bit, Mac pulls more and more air into his lungs until he’s able to open his eyes and coordinate a hand enough to slap at Jack.

“Hey, there you are, Mac,” Jack says with a watery smile. “Gave me a good scare. What happened?”

Mac opens his mouth to explain but he still can’t get the words out. Something is wrong. Even though he’s breathing now, each breath seems harder than the last. It’s becoming work in an entirely new way and it’s a way that Mac knows he can’t sustain. 

Mac breathes deep despite the pain, trying to reoxygenate himself enough to be able to move. Once he’s as fortified as he’s going to get, Mac rolls and grabs for the bag. It’s on his right side but because of his dislocated shoulder he’s forced to grab for it with his left. He falls short by a foot but Jack apparently sees what Mac needs and he hands the bag over.

“Pal, you gotta give me something to work with. Can you talk?” Jack asks, helping Mac unzip their little IFAK.

Mac fumbles through the contents until he located the decompression needle. He’s pulls the pen-like device out and presses it into Jack’s palm. Jack looks at the device like it’s a live IED.

“You think your lung is collapsed?” Jack asks.

Mac signs “yes,” his arms already lax by his sides again.

“Which side?”

Mac wiggles the fingers on his right hand, too tired to lift his arm to point.

“Alright, you just hang in there and let ol’ Jack do the work. We’ll get you breathing and ready to go in no time,” Jack says.

Mac closes his eyes. God he’s so tired and all he wants is sleep. Maybe he can just catch a quick nap while Jack gets everything ready.

A couple of rough slaps to Mac’s cheek force him to open his eyes once more. “No sleeping on the job, Mac. Gotta wake. Stay with me.”

Mac blinks up at Jack, once again aglow in red from the emergency lights, and sees a decompression needle gripped in his hand. He opens his mouth, gaping like a landed fish, but no words come out.

Jack tears open an alcohol prep pad and Mac abruptly remembers the smell from earlier, a brutal of the burning agony of his back. But the fear and memory pale in the face of Mac’s inability to breathe. His fingers flex weakly against the concrete beneath him and Jack roughly scrubs a little patch of his chest. 

“Alright, hoss, big stick and then things are gonna get better. Just hold still for me,” Jack directs. 

He puts his hand flat against Mac’s chest as if he’s holding him down and the adrenaline Mac gets from watching that large needle headed for his chest keeps him much more awake than he’d like to be. Jack presses it down, down, down and Mac’s eyes bunch shut as the sharp pain adds to the agony of simply breathing.

“Okay, just stay with me, Mac. I can hear the air coming out. It’s working,” Jack says encouragingly. 

Mac trusts Jack when he says that this is helping, but he can’t feel it. He’s suffocating. His chest is burning and he feels like he’s gonna die. He still wants to sleep but for the moment fear drives him to maintain consciousness. He feels panicky, what little breath he can draw coming in shallow and fast, and his fingers scrabble weakly at the concrete under him, like if he can find purchase on the ground somehow he’ll get a grip on the situation too. He stares up at the ceiling that’s bathed in a dim red glow from the emergency lights while darkness crowds the edges of his vision. 

Jack must notice Mac’s distress because suddenly Mac’s hands are held in Jack’s, the grip firm but careful. “Mac, I’m right here. We got this. _You_ got this. Once we get your chest all sorted out you’re gonna be okay. I need you to trust me, bud. I wouldn’t lie to you, okay? Just gotta breathe in and out, nice and deep. I know it hurts and I can’t do anything for that, but the deeper breaths you take the easier they’re gonna come. Just breathe with me, Mac. In… and out… In… and out…”

Slowly, Mac narrows his focus down to just Jack. He doesn’t have to do anything right now. All he has to do is breathe. But damned if it doesn’t feel like being hit by a truck with every breath. Mac can feel the tears stream down his cheeks as he breathes, but Jack was right and after a couple of minutes breathing comes almost easily.

Jack’s still smiling and holding Mac’s hands, talking up a storm about how he tried to rustle cattle to impress Margie Waller in tenth grade. It’s comforting. When Mac needs to get out of his head, Jack talks. And when the world falls out from under Mac’s feet, Jack brings him back. And right now, Jack’s hands feel like the safest thing in the world, holding Mac together so he doesn’t shake apart in fear in this damn stairwell nearly forty feet under LA.

*****

Mac listens to Jack as he taps out an SOS in Morse code on a water pipe. The lines are all broken, but it works out for them because the pipes are more resonant when they’re empty meaning their distress signal should carry farther. Assuming, of course, that the pipe isn’t severed or crimped hopelessly somewhere between where they are and help.

Jack’s forced Mac to drink an entire bottle of water so far. Mac is acutely aware that it’s half their supply and unfortunately there aren’t any dripping pipes in their pocket which means they have no means by which to refill their stores. 

Mac knows he’s been drifting in and out and has probably missed some time, but he’s relatively sure of two things. One, they’ve only been underground for four to six hours at the most. And two, Jack hasn’t consumed any of their water. Mac can’t say he’s surprised that Jack is conserving it, Mac would do the same if their roles were reversed. But the fact is, they need Jack to be the functioning one because Mac isn’t going to be helping them get out. He can’t.

He contemplates their survival probability based on several factors including water allocation, available oxygen, lack of food, the danger of further collapse in subsequent aftershocks, and their lack of medicine. Their chances, particularly Mac’s, decrease rather rapidly after the twelve hour mark. At twenty four hours Mac doesn’t see more than a fleeting chance that he could survive. If Jack rations the rest of the water carefully, though, he might be able to make it four days, but it would be pushing his luck. 

“Mac! Mac!!!” Jack whisper-shouts. “Do you hear it? Is that what I think it is?”

Mac immediately switches his focus externally and closes his eyes to listen. Faintly, he hears a _tap taaap taaap tap tap tap…_ It’s Morse code and it says, “Coming. Location?”

Jack is already frantically relaying the stairwell designation and level. Mac breathes an aching sigh of relief. 

“They said they’re close. Maybe an hour. Woo! We’re going home,” Jack says, pumping his arm. “Okay, well, you’re going to the ER. But we’ll go home in a few days.”

“You could go home and take a shower while I’m in the ER. They probably won’t let you back anyway,” Mac points out. With a natural disaster this catastrophic it’s unlikely that they’d allow anyone unnecessary into the ER due to the sheer volume of casualties. Despite this, Mac knows that no amount of reasoning is going to dissuade Jack.

“Hell, no. I go where you go. If you’re gonna be chilling in the ER for god only knows how long then I’m gonna be there too,” Jack declares imperiously.

Mac smiles but carefully refrains from his usual chuckle. “Thanks, Jack.”

*****

Two hours later, Mac is wearing a cervical collar and strapped to a spine board being gingerly carried through various twists and turns out of the rubble of the Phoenix headquarters. It hurts like hell but given the circumstances there’s no gentle way to go about it. 

Mac’s eyes are closed and he’s focused on breathing through the pain so doesn’t realize it when Jack bullies his way into the back of the ambulance. Mac registers the doors closing but the giveaway is that he can still hear Jack talking. 

Jack rattles on and on while they hook Mac up to IVs and an EKG. He gets oxygen which helps the swimmy foggy feeling in his head and then the paramedic decides that Jack’s previous handiwork with the decompression needle is failing. Mac opens his eyes to listen to the paramedic as he explains what he’s going to do, but he closes them again to avoid watching. 

Normally, Mac has a pretty minimal anxiety surrounding needles. But all his emotional reserves are spent. He’s scared and he wants someone to make this better. He wants to go home and curl up very carefully under a pile of blankets and not come out for a week, maybe more. He very much does not want to be stuck in the chest, yet again, with a needle the size of a small drinking straw. 

The paramedic swabs Mac’s chest not far from where Jack stuck him, and Mac tries to slow his breathing. It’s just a needle, just a quick poke and it’ll be easier to breathe again. But he can feel his hands starting to tremble and he bunches them into fists. 

The stretcher moves, sending jolts of pain down Mac’s back, and he hisses to avoid shouting. A pair of warm, firm hands carefully close around one of Mac’s trembling fists.

“Hey, I see you freaking out. I promise you I’m not gonna leave you. You got this, Mac. You just let this guy do the work. All you gotta do it lay there. No thinking about solving stuff, no puzzling out solutions to the world’s problems. You just lay there and relax and let old Jack keep an eye on you.”

Jack keeps talking, but Mac can already feel the hub of the catheter against his chest and hear the air hissing out of the needle. It’s over and Jack never gave him the chance to work himself up. Soon oxygen is flooding his cells and Mac feels the panic of suffocation begin to drain out of him. He’s exhausted and despite Jack and the paramedic’s admonishments, he falls asleep before they ever get to the ER.

*****

Jack fusses, tittering around Mac adjusting pillows and blankets, moving the end table so he can get his water without moving, locating books and the remote. It’s when he tries to put clean socks on Mac that he finally has had enough.

“Jack, you need to calm down,” Mac says, maybe a tad forcefully.

Jack looks up, the sock bunched up in his hands all the way to the toe. “Huh?”

“Jack, the hospital let me go home. I didn’t check out AMA. Yes, I am still healing, and yes, I hurt. But no, I will not catch my death of cold if you fail to put socks on me. Just let me sit here and enjoy my freedom from being in the hospital,” Mac requests.

Jack shakes his head. “If you get pneumonia, it could kill you. The doctor said so,” Jack contests.

Mac rolls his eyes and sighs. “Jack, you don’t catch pneumonia because of the ambient temperature and you definitely don’t catch it through your feet. I don’t think socks are going to be of any use.”

Jack lowers the sock and glares. “Now, look here. I had to watch you fade in and out of consciousness for a day and half before you finally got with the program. I was covered in your blood and buried under god only knows how many thousands of tons of concrete and shit—“ Mac opens his mouth to give an estimate and Jack points angrily at him. “Don’t you even try to deflect by spouting off some nonsense number that you know I can’t argue with. Besides, I don’t wanna know. Being buried alive is officially off the bucket list. But back to my main point. The socks are for me, too, because I am maybe still a tad bit stressed out. Can you please let me do this for my own state of mind without explaining disease vectors and viruses to me?”

That Jack was this close to losing it had not registered with Mac. In all fairness, the oxycontin he’s taking means that not a whole lot of anything is registering at the moment, but he’s a bit concerned that he missed the signs of an impending Jack-tastrophe, as Jack calls it.

“I actually have a warmer and fuzzier pair of socks at the back of my sock drawer. Riley got them for me last year. They’re purple with snowflakes,” Mac offers. He doesn’t care one whit about the socks themselves, but it gives Jack something to do, plus when RIley comes over she can see that Mac is actually, if only for the first time, making use of her gift.

Jack returns in moments with the socks and contentedly wiggles them over Mac’s toes and up onto his calf. “Comfy?”

“They’re softer than I realized. I guess the socks were a good idea after all. Thanks, Jack,” Mac says with a smile. Jack glares and flops back gracelessly into a recliner.

“You don’t have to patronize me,” Jack grumbles.

“I’m not. These are just the better pair of socks. It’s why I asked for them. Hospital socks are scratchy and not nearly as warm as these. It’s nice to put on my own stuff, you know?” 

Jack nods, apparently distracted by Mac’s aside about being home, or maybe just plain exhausted. 

“Jack, are you okay?” Mac asks bluntly. Letting Jack dance around his emotions won’t get either of them anywhere.

Jack blinks and looks up dumbly. “You’re the one that got flattened by a light fixture.”

“Hardy har har. That’s not what I meant. I mean you seem like you’re, I don’t know, just trying to keep it together, like any moment you’re about to have a Jack-tastrophe.”

Jack laughs bitterly. “Oh, I went and fell apart in the bathroom at the hospital yesterday while you were taking a nap. Jack’s breakdown train has left the station.”

Mac frowns. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been much good for conversation lately.”

Jack waves his hands. “You’re sorry? Mac you almost died. You suffocated in front me _twice._ I stitched you back together. And yes it was enough that I get to call it ‘back together.’ I don’t need you to be sorry. I need you to be alive.”

“I _am_ alive, Jack. I’m alive because of you,” Mac points out. “But it’s okay not to be alright with how everything went down. It was a close call.”

Jack sniffles and turns his head, though he doesn’t bother to brush away the tears. “If they hadn’t gotten to us when they did…”

Mac nods. “I know. It scared me, too.”

Jack sobs back a sob. “You panicked. I stuck you with that needle and you fucking panicked.”

“I was suffocating, Jack. You poking me with the decompression needle just happened around the time I was already flipping out. It’s not your fault. If anything I should be grateful, if it weren’t for you doing that I would have died in about another ten or fifteen minutes,” Mac says. It’s maybe not the most comforting thing but Mac doesn’t know how to fudge the truth to make the edges softer the way Jack does. 

“I get that, I do, but I hurt you and looked at me with fear in your eyes,” Jack argues.

Mac very carefully readjusts on the sofa to sit up a little higher. “Jack, you can’t possibly tell me that of all the times you’ve landed in medical — shot or stabbed or poisoned or whatever else — you can’t tell me that emergency medicine has ever been gentle or painless. It’s always terrifying, it always hurts. But we do it because it works. It’s not your fault. None of this was your fault.”

Jack’s leaning forward, elbows on knees and his face in his hands. “You were dying,” he repeats, his breaths shaky and muted by his hands. Mac can hear the tears in his voice and knows that this is days and days of Jack hovering at Mac’s bedside, though he can’t remember much of it. Mac saw himself in the mirror earlier and it’s not pretty — cuts, bruises, pallid skin — and that’s just from the earthquake. Then there are the bruises that litter his arms from the numerous needles, his veins blowing out and leaving livid purple splotches on his fair skin. He looks like shit and frankly he feels like it.

And Jack’s seen all of it, hell he tended all of it alone in the near pitch black of a crumbled building. Mac remembers how calm and collected Jack was down there, how supportive and sure. Looking back it was just Jack trying to keep Mac calm, to allay his fears, but there’s no way Jack wasn’t panicking right along with him. 

“Jack, come here,” Mac says. 

Jack looks up, his eyes red and his cheeks wet with tears. “Huh?”

“Come here. I need you to come here,” Mac repeats.

Jack wipes his face off and makes his way to Mac. 

“Give me your hand,” Mac requests. It’s not a demand, but the way Mac says it tells Jack that he’s not taking no for an answer either.

Jack holds out his hand and Mac takes it, pulling him until he’s close enough that Mac can lay Jack’s palm over his heart.

“Mac-” Jack says. He’s already shaking his head and pulling away. Mac knows why. The last time Jack had his hand pressed flat against Mac’s chest he was dying and Jack was sticking him with the straw sized needle. 

“Jack, you didn’t hurt me. I am alive. You can feel it. Now I need you to breathe with me. Just feel the rise and fall of my chest and breathe.”

Mac steadies his breathing, even counts on the inhale and exhale. After a minute, Jack stops resisting and sags carefully onto the sofa beside Mac. But while Mac’s breathing stays steady, Jack’s hitches more, coming in ragged gasps as his crying redoubles. Before long, his face rests gently against Mac’s blanketed stomach. Mac wraps his free hand around the back of Jack’s head and rubs with his thumb while Jack finally lets go of the front he’s been putting on for everyone.

“I’m here, Jack. I got you. We’re both alive and safe. I’m gonna be fine. Just breathe.”

Mac murmurs reassurances and continues to gently rub the back of Jack’s head until his sobs are replaced with hiccoughs and sniffles. 

“Better?” Mac asks once Jack has sat up.

Jack laughs wetly. “No, this is gonna haunt me for a long time.”

Mac nods. He’s already feeling pretty haunted by it himself, but it’s a little different what with the meds and the overall emotional numbness that’s only just starting to wear off. There are probably plenty of nightmares on the horizon for both of them, but there’s no use dwelling on that fact. Instead, Mac plans to be there for Jack as much as Jack is there for him. Once he can get up and around more easily, there’ll be enough life in the house to keep those terrible dark hours at bay more often than not. Because that’s all either of them can do — keep on living to make the best of the second chance that they’ve got.


End file.
